


out for a duck

by suspendrs



Series: disaster harry [5]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: ? - Freeform, Ducks, Fluff, M/M, idk - Freeform, that's really all there is, this fic doesn't even warrant any tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 16:40:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17853290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suspendrs/pseuds/suspendrs
Summary: “Well, once I got control of Clifford, I took him right back to the house and changed my clothes and gave him one hell of a dressing down, let me tell you,” he scoffs. “And then I felt so bad I went back out to see if the duck had gone back to her eggs, and that Clifford hadn’t damaged them or hurt the duck at all. She wasn’t there when I got back, and I sat there for hours waiting for her, but she never showed her face! She just up and abandoned her babies, just left them there cold and alone, all because a dog barked at her,” he sighs, shaking his head.“Still not sure why the eggs are now in my kitchen,” Louis frowns.“I couldn’t just leave them there!” Harry says. “It was my fault they were abandoned! Well, Clifford’s fault, but whatever. I couldn’t live with myself if I just left them there to die. So I came back to the house and got a bowl and some gloves and scooped them up so I could bring them home and keep them warm until they hatch.”Or, Harry accidentally adopts two duck eggs.





	out for a duck

**Author's Note:**

> \--DO NOT REPOST--
> 
> she hasn't posted since october and she comes back with a 2k piece of trash about ducks?? yeah, idk either.
> 
> here's how this came about:  
> me: give me a prompt  
> keely: egg  
> me: no, i need more  
> keely: ...two eggs?
> 
> so, here you have it, my first addition to the disaster harry franchise: two eggs. enjoy.

There aren’t a lot of things that surprise Louis anymore. He’s been dating the weirdest man alive for the better part of a decade now, and he’s pretty sure he’s seen just about everything there is to see. Just last week he came home to find Harry, half naked, dangling upside down from the second floor landing like a bat, and he hardly even blinked. He is no stranger to chaos in his own house, isn’t even really affected by it anymore, but sometimes it’s the little things that catch him off guard.

There’s a plastic mixing bowl on the kitchen counter when he gets home from work, perfectly inconspicuous, but it still catches Louis’s eye when he walks into the kitchen. Harry must be baking something, which means Louis gets to eat said thing, so naturally, he heads straight for the bowl to have a peek. Harry himself is nowhere to be seen, so Louis doesn’t bother being sneaky when he lifts the corner of the tea towel over the top of the bowl and peers inside.

He finds two eggs, perfectly intact, sitting in the bottom of the bowl. He frowns, glancing around the kitchen to make sure Harry isn’t pranking him, and then gets a closer look. They’re slightly bigger than normal eggs, and a little more speckled, and they’re a little bit dirty and wet like they came from outside.

Louis puts the tea towel down carefully, still frowning, and turns to Clifford, who has just come trotting into the room to greet him. Louis takes a few moments to say hello to him, and then turns back to the bowl, hoping that this time when he lifts the tea towel he’ll find a few more answers. He still only finds the two eggs, though, and he turns back to Clifford when a curious frown.

“Oh,” says a voice from behind him, and Louis turns to find Harry in the doorway, another plastic mixing bowl in his hands. “You’re home,” he says, looking shocked.

“I’m home,” Louis says, dropping the tea towel over the bowl again. “What’s with the eggs?”

“Oh, god,” Harry says quietly, putting the bowl in his hands down on the kitchen table and hiding his face in his hands, which are filthy, mud caked under his fingernails. “I was hoping you weren’t going to ask that.”

Louis blinks, standing up on his toes to get a look at what Harry’s got in the other bowl. “I’d make a witty guess, but I honestly haven’t got a single clue as to what you could be doing here.”

“It was Clifford’s fault!” Harry says quickly, pointing at the dog. “He started it!”

“Started… what, exactly?” Louis asks.

“ _It_ ,” Harry shrieks, with a wild flourish of his hand. “He scared the poor thing half to death, and what was I supposed to do, just leave them there? No, it’s up to me to pick up after his messes, as always-”

“Harry,” Louis says, stepping forward to hold Harry by his forearms in hopes of calming his erratic gesturing. “You’re scaring me.”

Harry takes a deep breath and lets it out all at once, right into Louis’s face. He melts into Louis’s arms, hugging him around the waist and probably getting mud all over the back of his shirt.

“You know the little brook in the woods behind the garden?” Harry asks, looking up at Louis. Louis nods, so Harry puts his head back down on his chest. He’s a bit heavy for Louis to be supporting all his weight like this, and Harry’s taller than him, so he’s stooped over awkwardly to fit against his chest and, yeah, Louis can definitely feel the wet, cool mud seeping through his clothes. “Well, I took Clifford for a walk this morning after you left, because he wouldn’t stop whining at the door for you, so we walked all along the brook and it led to this beautiful little pond, right? And Cliffy was having so much fun barking at all the birds and sniffing about all the trees, I nearly let him off his leash to have a wander, that’s how lovely it was. It’s a good job I didn’t, though,” he huffs.

“So, the part about the eggs?” Louis pushes gently.

“I’m getting there,” Harry says, indignant. “So, anyway, we’re walking around the pond, and there’s this beautiful little duck sitting in the reeds by the shore, so I’m like ‘oh, Cliffy, look at the duck!’ you know, like a _dumbass_ , and Cliffy just _takes off after it_.”

“Oh no,” Louis says. 

“Oh, _yes_ ,” Harry says. “He pulled me right over, got a face full of dirt and everything, and he’s just fucking going wild at this poor duck, right? And she’s just sitting there, calm as ever, minding her own business, but she’s looking at Clifford, like, _get away from me, buddy_ , so I’m thinking oh, she must have eggs, right?”

“Right,” Louis says, starting to catch on to where this story is going.

“So Clifford just keeps barking like crazy, and I’m trying to get myself up off the ground, and I’m yelling for Clifford to stop and the duck is starting to get nervous and I finally get up and there’s a whole _worm_ stuck to the front of my shirt, which startled me, and I _dropped the leash_.”

“Oh, Harry, no,” Louis says, biting down hard on his own lip to keep from laughing.

“Yes!” Harry says. “And I’m thinking, ducks are pretty territorial, right? Like, if Clifford goes after this duck, she’s going to absolutely slaughter him, right? Well, Clifford goes right for the duck, and what does the duck do? She just _flies away_!”

“Unbelievable,” Louis says, glancing at the bowl with the eggs in. He’s got a feeling they have a long few days ahead of them.

“I know!” Harry says. “She just left her eggs right there, in harm’s way, and got the fuck out of there! What kind of mother is that?”

“So, why do we now have the eggs?” Louis asks.

“Well, once I got control of Clifford, I took him right back to the house and changed my clothes and gave him one hell of a dressing down, let me tell you,” he scoffs. “And then I felt so bad I went back out to see if the duck had gone back to her eggs, and that Clifford hadn’t damaged them or hurt the duck at all. She wasn’t there when I got back, and I sat there for _hours_ waiting for her, but she never showed her face! She just up and abandoned her babies, just left them there cold and alone, all because a dog barked at her,” he sighs, shaking his head. 

“Still not sure why the eggs are now in my kitchen,” Louis frowns.

“I couldn’t just leave them there!” Harry says. “It was my fault they were abandoned! Well, Clifford’s fault, but whatever. I couldn’t live with myself if I just left them there to die. So I came back to the house and got a bowl and some gloves and scooped them up so I could bring them home and keep them warm until they hatch.”

“And the second bowl of mud?” Louis asks.

“I don’t know, I figured if I got some mud from near the pond for them to hatch in it would be more like home for them. I was gonna just take their whole nest, but apparently ducks don’t have nests,” Harry says, looking distraught. 

“So how exactly are you planning on incubating these eggs?” Louis says. “Are you going to sit on them yourself?”

“Well, no,” Harry frowns. “I found a tutorial on Youtube about making an incubator with a cardboard box and a lightbulb, so I was going to try that,” he says.

“You are the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met,” Louis says, letting go of him and walking back over to look into the bowl. He gazes at the eggs for a few seconds, imagining the little baby ducks growing inside, and then turns back to Harry. “So how do we build this incubator?”

-

It takes about a week for the eggs to hatch. Harry pretty much shrugs off all of his responsibilities in favor of sitting in front of the incubator to keep an eye of them, and it’s where Louis finds him most mornings, evenings, and even in the middle of the night, on occasion. 

When the eggs finally do begin to hatch Harry, in true Harry fashion, sleeps through it.

Louis comes down the stairs on Sunday morning to find Harry passed out at the kitchen table, the cardboard incubator plugged in right beside him. There’s a tiny, weak peeping from inside the box, and Louis hurries over to have a look.

Both of the eggs have been cracked open, and there’s a little beak poking through the top of one, peeping out into the world it hasn’t seen yet. It fills Louis with so much unexpected joy he nearly shouts; he was almost positive that it was too late for these eggs, they were never going to hatch, and knowing Harry, he’d keep them around until they were completely rotted through, just to be sure they wouldn’t hatch. They’re hatching, though, right before Louis’s eyes, and he all but shoves Harry off his chair in an effort to wake him up.

“What?” Harry grunts, jolting awake. “I’m up.”

“You’re missing it!” Louis says, nudging him again. “Look!”

Harry sits up quickly, peering over the side of the box. “Oh!” he says, standing up so fast he almost knocks his chair over. “Oh my god! Look!”

Louis grins, hugging Harry sideways and watching the first little duckling chip away at the shell until he can get his whole head out. Harry holds him tight, clenching his fists into the back of Louis’s dressing gown, and Louis knows that if he looked up he’d find tears in Harry’s eyes. He almost can’t judge him, though; he’s a little choked up himself, watching the duckling continue breaking away at his egg until he can climb fully out of the shell. The other duckling is a little slower, still working on the initial chips, but his brother is full of life, curiously exploring the bottom of the box, going straight to the water dish that Harry’s been diligently cleaning and changing every day for the past week.

“Oh my god,” Harry says again, and he’s definitely crying, Louis can hear it in his voice. “Oh my god, Louis, look at him.”

“He’s so fucking cute,” Louis says. “Harry, look what you did!”

“Stop,” Harry says, pressing his face into Louis’s hair. “I’ll explode.”

“Look, look, the other one is coming!” Louis says, nudging Harry gently. The second duckling is only just working on getting his head outside the egg, and once he does, he lets out a single, almighty peep.

It startles a laugh out of both Louis and Harry, but the duckling doesn’t seem deterred, working on getting the rest of the way out of the shell and waddling over to the water dish, too. Harry turns and sobs into Louis’s hair, shifting to hug him properly.

“You’re ridiculous,” Louis laughs, holding him tight. 

“Am not,” Harry says. “I think it’s perfectly natural to cry over the birth of two ducklings that you saved from certain death and a careless mother.”

“You’re a quack,” Louis says. “An absolute quack pot.”

“And the puns stop there,” Harry says, pulling away to look back down at his ducklings. “Oh my god, they’re so cute. What should we name them?”

“We’re naming them?” Louis says. “I thought we were just going to let them go?”

“Oh,” Harry says, his face falling. “Yeah. Maybe we shouldn’t name them, then.”

They’re silent for a moment, just watching the ducks, the two of them peeping about like they haven’t a care in the world. The one that hatched first is a little bit taller, with a longer neck, and the other one is almost perfectly round, fluffy as anything. Louis’s heart aches at the thought of sending these two tiny creatures out into the wild on their own, and he turns his face and sighs into Harry’s shoulder.

“We could probably build them a little duck house in the garden, right?” he asks. “And we can get a duck door so they can come inside, maybe.”

“I love you,” Harry says, squeezing him tight. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” Louis says. “I should’ve known neither of us were going to be able to let these things go.”

“I think Kiwi would make a good duck name,” Harry says. “You name the other one.”

“Bumble,” Louis says, smiling at the rounder duck. “Because he’s just kind of bumbling around.”

“Kiwi and Bumble,” Harry grins, reaching down to stick one finger into the box for the ducks to investigate. Bumble seems completely indifferent to the new addition to his world, but Kiwi nips curiously at Harry’s fingertip, and then carries on as normal. “I love them so much,” Harry whines, pressing his face into Louis’s neck.

“We have ducks now,” Louis says, shrugging one shoulder. “You never fail to keep life interesting, Harry Styles.”

Harry just laughs, turning to kiss Louis square on the mouth. Louis goes obligingly, pulling Harry out of view of the cardboard box to spare the innocence of his little ducklings which, as soon as he thinks it, is something he really and truly never imagined would be a real thought in his head.

If there’s one thing Louis’s learned in life as Harry’s boyfriend, though, it’s that no matter what happens, something even stranger is waiting around the corner, and he’ll never grow tired of following every twist and turn his disaster of a partner will lead him through.

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked the fic, you can reblog it [here](http://suspendrs.tumblr.com/post/182926966223/out-for-a-duck-by-suspendrs-2k-well-once-i-got).
> 
> [faq](http://suspendrs-fics.tumblr.com/faq)


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